What’s a Worthy?

Look at all these old white guys. Just look at them.

In the 14th century, several authors began to latch onto the concept of The Nine Worthies, a collection of men who exemplified virtue: kind of like the Seven Wonders of the World, except for people. We’re talking folk like King Arthur, Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne. A few years after that, authors started identifying a female pantheon of worthies as well. And much like the actual Seven Wonders, nobody ever agreed who, exactly, was and was not on the list.

Is that Semiramis on the left? Wait, I thought it was Penthesilea.

Modern Worthies

Sometimes I run across people whom I don’t feel are good fits for full entries. Sometimes it’s because their story is so short, or because they didn’t have the right amount of struggle in their lives to make for a really interesting story. Most of the time, it’s because they died within recent memory — as a rule, I won’t do entries on people who have been alive in the past fifty years, out of respect. But there’s so many awesome and interesting women! What to do?

Enter: Modern Worthies, a showcase for just such women.

The general guidelines:

I’m not advocating any Worthy as a role model. There’s going to be some horrible people on there. (worthy of what, exactly, is left to your imagination)

I’m not doing a ton of research on them. I usually just link to a news story or Wikipedia entry.

They can be a pretty short entry (say, just a picture of a gun-wielding centenarian).

I post a maximum of one or two per day, just to keep something going on the website in between princess entries.

I do so with the aim of building a map/database of modern-day interesting women as a resource to everyone.

Just because I don’t do any art for them, doesn’t mean you can’t! If you do, send it to me and I’ll make a post (with a link to you)!